Just two weeks before the start of school year of 2014/2015, eleven Arab-Palestinian families, residents of Ramat Ashkol neighborhood in Lydd, heard from one of the kindergarten teachers that the Lydd Municipality decided to move their children, who are with special needs, to another kindergarten building, or rather caravan, about 5 km away from their neighborhood.

After the news about the takeover of “Albustan” kindetgarten, the families went to check the matter. To their surprise the kindergarten was named “Moaz” instead of “Albustan” and became a Jewish only kindergarten. The Arab family were kicked out by Jewish religious women, who apparently work at the kindergarten.

Jewish women kicking out Palestinian mothers from “Albustan”

Not only that the municipality did not notify officially the families of the Arab children, to bring Jewish ones from Ultra Orthodox families, who live away from the place. Find the logic here!

Photojournalist Robert Croma visited Palestine and Israel in 1988 during the First Intifada and captured a collection of powerful images of life under Israeli military occupation. Although he no longer has access to many of his original negatives, his blown-up contact prints give us a window into the brutality and intimidation, both physical and emotional, endured by Palestinians in both the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Here are some of his best photographs.

Click on the images to open them in new tabs where you will be able to zoom in and appreciate the subtle details of the scenes.

A Throw in Jerusalem

A plain-clothed Israeli security serviceman throws a tear gas canister down a narrow corridor at Palestinian youths in Jerusalem, 1988.

A Mother’s Intervention

A Palestinian mother tries to prevent an Israeli soldier from arresting her son in Gaza City, 1988.

Sitting in a local book/coffee shop, totally focused on writing and studying this second year of law school mess I am currently in, multiples of files open on my laptop: from lecture handouts, to essay drafts, to reading lists, to a legal dictionary, to statutes and you know where this is going. Of course studying isn’t complete without Facebook, twitter, youtube, google and the dailymail tabs. You can imagine the hassle, but hey what’s writing an essay all about without procrastination?. This place I am sitting in is pretty cosy, where it gets to the point that the other customer may be sitting next you at the same table. I was so into my work, when this little warning tab appears saying ‘Your startup disk is almost full. You need to make more space by deleting files’. I have had that message appear over and over again and I hated…

I have been reading this book for a while now. Its called “It’s easier to reach Heaven than the end of the street”

I agree it is a long name for a book.

To some the name might give a hint about the subject to others not so much. Either way to make it easier to all, the book talks about Palestine and the occupation.

Its by an Englishwoman called Emma Williams. I have not yet finished the book but I had to stop and make this comment: the paragraph in the picture contains a LIE. Falafel is not israeli dish!! All the zionist occupiers who came to Palestine prior to the Nakba did not know Falafel! This is a case of success for the occupation in which it has managed to steal yet another part of our culture and identity and claim it for itself. This is not the first time that I or any of you have heard or seen these cases of success but the main reason I took note this time is the remainder of the paragraph in which the writer acknowledges the claim of the occupiers to the originality of the dish as israeli!

As a Palestinian while reading the book I am very conscious of the language used by the writer and I realize that coming from an Englishwoman the book is rather objective but not quite. You have to focus to see the subjectivity of the writer slowly creeping in.

The book discusses the writer’s memoir in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada and while the writer stresses the fact of the occupation of the “West Bank and Gaza” she ignores to a large extent the original crime of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and only hints at it. The writer also stresses the grievances of the zionists regarding the “suicide bombings” to a greater degree than the horrors of daily occupation.

While reading you notice zionist complaints being written in the body of the text while the related Palestinian complaint is mentioned in the footnote.

I will not say that the book is completely biased because it is not, but I am also very aware of my feeling that it is a book that could have been a bit fairer to us as Palestinians but then again I did not expect it to be considering most of the world’s view of “Israel” as a legitimate entity while to me it will never be.

I am not sure whether I have made my point clear here but to those of you who know arabic I would recommend that at this point in time you read Mahmoud Darwish’s poem: عابرون في كلام عابر as it comes to mind when i want to say to zionists get out of our lives, our history, our culture and our Land! And leave our Falafel, our Hummos, our Mansaf, our Msakhan and our Kaffiyeh to us!

The following quote is what Edward Said thinks no Palestinian can forget

Violence has been an extraordinarily important aspect of our lives. Whether it has been the violence of our uprooting and the destruction of our society in 1948, the violence visited on us by our enemies, the violence we have visited on others or, most horribly, the violence we have wreaked on each other.

Edward Said (1986), After the Last Sky, London: Vintage p. 5.

I believe that today this applies to all the oppressed societies in the world. Violence has become such a dominant scene in our lives it has become the norm.

It seems that even our daily struggle for a living is violent. Its a more subtle kind of violence in which we are grinding out our needs from the toughest of stones, but its a daily violence nonetheless.